Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption

Bryan Stevenson was a young lawyer when he founded the Equal Justice Initiative, a legal practice dedicated to defending those most desperate and in need: the poor, the wrongly condemned, and women and children trapped in the farthest reaches of our criminal justice system. One of his first cases was that of Walter McMillian, a young man who was sentenced to die for a notorious murder he insisted he didn’t commit.

The Night Stalker: The Life and Crimes of Richard Ramirez

Decades after Richard Ramirez left 13 dead and paralyzed the city of Los Angeles, his name is still synonymous with fear, torture, and sadistic murder. Philip Carlo's classic The Night Stalker, based on years of meticulous research and extensive interviews with Ramirez, revealed the killer and his horrifying crimes to be even more chilling than anyone could have imagined. The story of Ramirez is a bizarre and spellbinding descent into the very heart of human evil.

Blood at the Root: A Racial Cleansing in America

National Book Award finalist Patrick Phillips tells Forsyth's tragic story in vivid detail and traces its long history of racial violence all the way back to antebellum Georgia. Recalling his own childhood in the 1970s and '80s, Phillips sheds light on the communal crimes of his hometown and the violent means by which locals kept Forsyth all white well into the 1990s.

The Hating Game: A Novel

Lucy Hutton has always been certain that the nice girl can get the corner office. She's charming and accommodating and prides herself on being loved by everyone at Bexley & Gamin. Everyone except for coldly efficient, impeccably attired, physically intimidating Joshua Templeman. And the feeling is mutual.

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

In the era of colorblindness, it is no longer socially permissible to use race, explicitly, as a justification for discrimination, exclusion, and social contempt. Yet, as legal star Michelle Alexander reveals, today it is perfectly legal to discriminate against convicted criminals in nearly all the ways that it was once legal to discriminate against African Americans.

A Man Called Ove

Meet Ove. He's a curmudgeon - the kind of man who points at people he dislikes as if they were burglars caught outside his bedroom window. He has staunch principles, strict routines, and a short fuse. People call him "the bitter neighbor from hell". But behind the cranky exterior there is a story and a sadness.

Truly Madly Guilty

In Truly Madly Guilty, Liane Moriarty takes on the foundations of our lives: marriage, sex, parenthood, and friendship. She shows how guilt can expose the fault lines in the most seemingly strong relationships, how what we don't say can be more powerful than what we do, and how sometimes it is the most innocent of moments that can do the greatest harm.

Adnan's Story: The Search for Truth and Justice After Serial

On February 28, 2000, Adnan Syed was convicted and sentenced to life plus 30 years for the murder of his ex-girlfriend, Hae Min Lee, a high school senior in Baltimore, Maryland. From the moment of his arrest, Syed has consistently maintained his innocence. Rabia Chaudry, a family friend, always believed him and has never given up the hope that he might someday be released. By 2013, however, after almost all appeals had been exhausted, things looked bleak.

Failure of Justice: A Brutal Murder, an Obsessed Cop, Six Wrongful Convictions

Everyone felt the same way: Small-town Nebraska widow Helen Wilson didn't have an ounce of meanness in her body. Then, on February 5, 1985, one of the coldest nights on record, the unthinkable happened. The 68-year-old resident was murdered inside her second-floor apartment. But why?

The Sound of Gravel: A Memoir

Ruth Wariner was the 39th of her father's 42 children. Growing up on a farm in rural Mexico, where authorities turned a blind eye to the practices of her community, Ruth lives in a ramshackle house without indoor plumbing or electricity. At church, preachers teach that God will punish the wicked by destroying the world and that women can ascend to heaven only by entering into polygamous marriages and giving birth to as many children as possible.

Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey through His Son's Meth Addiction

David Sheff's story is a first: a teenager's addiction from the parent's point of view, a real-time chronicle of the shocking descent into substance abuse and the gradual emergence into hope.

Before meth, Sheff's son, Nic, was a varsity athlete, honor student, and award-winning journalist. After meth, he was a trembling wraith who stole money from his eight-year-old brother and lived on the streets. With haunting candor, Sheff traces the first warning signs, the attempts at rehabilitation, and, at last, the way past addiction. He shows us that, whatever an addict's fate, the rest of the family must care for one another, too, lest they become addicted to addiction.

Accused: My Fight for Truth, Justice and the Strength to Forgive

Tonya Craft, a Georgia kindergarten teacher and loving mother of two, never expected a knock on her door to change her life forever. But in May 2008, false accusations of child molestation turned her world upside down. The trial that followed dragged her reputation through the mud and lent nationwide notoriety to her name. Tonya's life spiraled into a witch-trial nightmare in which she was deemed guilty before her innocence could be determined by a jury.

Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis

Hillbilly Elegy is a passionate and personal analysis of a culture in crisis - that of white working-class Americans. The decline of this group, a demographic of our country that has been slowly disintegrating over 40 years, has been reported on with growing frequency and alarm but has never before been written about as searingly from the inside. J. D. Vance tells the true story of what a social, regional, and class decline feels like when you were born with it hung around your neck.

The Day the Revolution Began: Reconsidering the Meaning of Jesus's Crucifixion

In The Day the Revolution Began, N. T. Wright once again challenges commonly held Christian beliefs, as he did in Surprised by Hope. Demonstrating the rigorous intellect and breathtaking knowledge that have long defined his work, Wright argues that Jesus' death on the cross was not only to absolve us of our sins, it was actually the beginning of a revolution commissioning the Christian faithful to a new vocation - a royal priesthood responsible for restoring and reconciling all of God's creation.

Unfair: The New Science of Criminal Injustice

Weaving together historical examples, scientific studies, and compelling court cases - from the border collie put on trial in Kentucky to the five teenagers who falsely confessed in the Central Park Jogger case - Benforado shows how our judicial processes fail to uphold our values and protect society's weakest members. With clarity and passion, he lays out the scope of the problem and proposes a wealth of reforms that could prevent injustice and help us achieve true fairness and equality before the law.

The Nightingale

Audie Award, Fiction, 2016. From the number-one New York Times bestselling author comes Kristin Hannah’s next novel. It is an epic love story and family drama set at the dawn of World War II. She is the author of twenty-one novels. Her previous novels include Home Front, Night Road, Firefly Lane, Fly Away, and Winter Garden.

The Souls of Black Folk

“The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line,” writes Du Bois, in one of the most prophetic works in all of American literature. First published in 1903, this collection of 15 essays dared to describe the racism that prevailed at that time in America—and to demand an end to it. Du Bois’ writing draws on his early experiences, from teaching in the hills of Tennessee, to the death of his infant son, to his historic break with the conciliatory position of Booker T. Washington.

Pretending to Dance: A Novel

Molly Arnette is very good at keeping secrets. She and her husband live in San Diego, where they hope to soon adopt a baby. But the process terrifies her. As the questions and background checks come one after another, Molly worries that the truth she's kept hidden about her North Carolina childhood will rise to the surface and destroy not only her chance at adoption but her marriage as well.

Publisher's Summary

Jennifer Thompson was raped at knifepoint by a man who broke into her apartment while she slept. She was able to escape and eventually identified Ronald Cotton as her attacker. Ronald insisted that she was mistaken - but Jennifer's positive identification was the compelling evidence that put him behind bars. After 11 years, Ronald was allowed to take a DNA test that proved his innocence. He was released after serving more than a decade in prison for a crime he never committed.

Two years later, Jennifer and Ronald met face to face - and forged an unlikely friendship that changed both of their lives. In their own words, Jennifer and Ronald unfold the harrowing details of their tragedy, and challenge our ideas of memory and judgment while demonstrating the profound nature of human grace and the healing power of forgiveness.

The story was compelling and they did a good job of building anticipation even though you know the outcome - particularly in the beginning. The writing itself was ok. The female reader was a little too sing-songy but I liked the male reader. It did prompt me to research a little more about it on the internet. I gave it for stars because of the subject matter and how sad yet positive it ends up. I'd have only given it three based on the writing itself.

If you could sum up Picking Cotton in three words, what would they be?

Heart-wrenching, heart-warming, layered

What was one of the most memorable moments of Picking Cotton?

The description of Ronald Cotton's decision to not use a shiv in prison on an intended enemy. Based on advice from his father.

What does Richard Allen and Karen White bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

Richard Allen's voice is mellifluous and entrancing. He does a first-class job of presenting that his character is flawed but innocent and that he retains hos hope and dignity through and unjust system and process.

Karen White makes her character - whom readers could so easily dismiss as an antagonist - a hero in her own right. She helps us to understand how a very "good" person could be the principal agent in assisting something "bad" to happen.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

I listened to this book while training for a long-distance walking event and could literally forget about the 100 degree heat and sweltering humidity and walk for 2, 4, even 6 hours entranced in the story.

Any additional comments?

This book explores very complex issues that arose from a true-life situation that can only be described as a no-win situation for its victims involved. But these people gutted it out and survived to go on and find true happiness and friendship together. I cried in sadness, anger, fear, and ultimately in heartfelt cheer. Who needs fiction when we have such rich and layered true life stories. Stories everybody should hear and know.

This is one of those feel-good stories that cuts across racial and socio-economic boundaries. The story is well-told, though not particularly well-written. The male narration is excellent, you can almost see Cotton's face as his parts of the story are spoken a distinctive "Nor-uth Curolinuh" drawl. Worth buying at the discounted price, but not worth spending a credit on. I'm cheap.

This is a true tale of two people who were victimized by a crime. One was victimized by the offender and the other was victimized by faulty eyewitness testimony and wrongful conviction. Ronald Cotton never gave up and fought for himself. The truth came out and he was exonerated. He was strong enough to forgive Jennifer and form a friendship with her. they worked together to reach out to wrongfully convicted people and reform eyewitness testimony.

I read this book for Forensic Psychology and thought it was amazing. I got choked up several times and think this is a wonderful story of forgiveness. It shines a light on the faulty aspects of the legal system and how well meaning police can accidentally lead victims to give incorrect eye witness testimony.